Digital round-up: New buy-and-sell fundraising app launched

A new buy-and-sell fundraising app is to launch this month in Manchester with a national roll-out to follow.

Buengo offers users a platform on which to buy and sell items while donating the proceeds to their chosen causes at the same time. The launch event, Sell it for MCR, runs from 21 to 28 May and so far 28 charities that will run fundraising campaigns on the app have signed up to the platform. Most of them are based in Manchester, although there are several national charities registered, including the Bone Cancer Research Trust and Vision Africa.

Charities or other good causes register for free profiles on the app, which allows them to create their fundraising campaigns. When a campaign ends, the proceeds are transferred directly to the organisation once a 5 per cent platform fee and a payment provider fee are deducted. The latter fee ranges from 1.4% of the amount paid plus 20p per transaction to 2.9% plus 20p per transaction, depending on the type of card used.

Buengo also supports direct money donations, which do not incur the platform fee but do incur a payment fee that is 0.5 per cent of the amount raised. Charities will be able to send updates to their supporters through the app, creating a new donor communication stream.

Twitter has issued a warning to all users to change their passwords after a bug was found that stored passwords in an internal log.

The social media organisation said the issue had been fixed and that its investigation found there had been no breach or misuse by anyone.

However, in a blog on its website written by its chief technology officer, Parag Agrawal, Twitter said users should take precautions by changing passwords on all of its services.

He wrote: "We mask passwords through a process called hashing using a function known as bcrypt, which replaces the actual password with a random set of numbers and letters that are stored in Twitter’s system. This allows our systems to validate your account credentials without revealing your password. This is an industry standard.

"Due to a bug, passwords were written to an internal log before completing the hashing process. We found this error ourselves, removed the passwords, and are implementing plans to prevent this bug from happening again."

The Teenage Cancer Trust has released a video featuring a young person’s experience of cancer through video gaming.

The film features a 16-year-old girl, Ellie, who was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma three years ago. It depicts her cancer experience through gaming, as her avatar battles through the rounds of the game while talking about her own experience of having cancer and the effect on her and those around her. The gaming imagery with Ellie’s voiceover combines in an easy way to tell a story that could help to reassure those who might be experiencing similar problems.